#Meteorwatch

Here's one for your diary:

Following on from the success of #moonwatch back in May this year (an event which attracted people such as Maggie Philbin, how cool is that?!), Newbury Astronomical Society, in association with IYA2009UK, are going to run #meteorwatch.

The event will happen on the night of the 11^th and 12^th of August, coinciding with the expected peak of the Perseids meteor shower.

The Twitter Meteorwatch will start at 21.30 BST on the 11th of August and will continue through to the evening of the 12th of August. Amateur and professional astronomers from the US and other countries are invited to join in and take over from the UK, when the sun comes up here, helping make the event run for over 24 hours and be truly international. The event will close in the UK, in the early hours of the 13th of August 2009.

See the main page for the event for more details, and be sure to follow @NewburyAS over on Twitter.

Now that I've got an Android phone, which runs a twitter client (twidroid), and now that I've got a laptop with a WiFi connection, I should be in a good position to take part. All being well, weather permitting, I'll be out in the garden, doing my best to add to #meteorwatch.

See you there?

Thee Years of Sunspot Counts

It's now three years since I decided to make a point of doing sunspot counts as often as possible (I say "now", I'm actually a few days late make a note of this).

While weather, and other things, do often get in the way, I've managed to log 378 observations so far. The sunspot graphs are coming along pretty nice too (even if they are a bit flat due to the solar minimum).

The sunspot/active area observation list is starting to get pretty long now and, at some point, I might have to think about reworking it so it pages or something. On the other hand the active area timeline is doing fine (and it shows rather nicely just how quiet things have been of late).

I hope things start to pick up this year. It would be nice to see some significant solar activity again.

Finally Seen Comet Lulin

Last night, after waiting most of the week (and being defeated by cloud), I finally got to see comet Lulin.

There was no sign of it with the naked eye but I could see it (after a little bit of searching) with my 10x50 binocular, and also with my 20x60 monocular. Not the most impressive of comets, at least not at this point. There was some obvious elongation, but I wouldn't say I could see any kind of tail. There wasn't any obvious "concentration" to it at all, it was more of a large ghostly colourless patch than anything else.

Finally! Some Solar Action! (Redux)

Back in May this year I noted that the Sun appeared to have gone quiet again, as of 2008-05-08 I'd not observed a sunspot since 2008-03-31. At that time the quiet period hadn't been quite as long as the one I'd observed towards the end of last year but it turned out to be a very long run of a blank Sun (as seen on the days I observed and with my equipment).

Finally, today, I had my first view of a sunspot since the end of March this year. New active area 1005 had two small spots visible.

It's quite nice to see a little blip on my sunspot graphs. They were starting to look a little boring. ;-)

Today's Eclipse: A Short Photo Diary

Just to add a little to my log of today's eclipse, a short photo diary of the session:

The session didn't start out too well, the Solarscope went flying in the wind so I had to come up with a method of making it heavier. I knew all those old power supplies would come in handy one day:

With the flying 'scope problem pretty much solved, the main event got under way:




However, the wind picked up, so more weight was needed. This is why you should never throw away that old laptop battery:


Soon, it got cloudy. Time to photograph my amazing solar observatory then:


Of course, because we were getting close to mid-eclipse, it wasn't a case of the whole sky being cloudy. Oh no. Towards the Sun it looked like this:


Whereas behind me:


However, around mid-eclipse, things did clear up:


So it wasn't a total loss. :-)

Eclipse Observing Log

I've now uploaded my observing log from today's eclipse. There's a handful of photographs in there too. Nothing too special, just captures of the view as seen via the Solarscope.

I'll probably get around to uploading some more elsewhere at some point. I'll post here when I do.

The eclipse is over for me

Well, that's it for me. The earlier fair weather turned increasingly cloudy and, at around 10:50 BST, I was pretty much clouded out.

I had a reasonable run though. Managed to see the very start of the eclipse and got a good, albeit short, view around mid-eclipse. You can see the updates I made over on Twitter and Plurk (the latter being a new one to me but I thought I'd give it a go to see what it's like).

I'll try and type up my log later on. I've also got a bunch of photographs which I took on my Canon PowerShot G9. Once I've downloaded them and processed them they'll appear in the photography section of my main site and also over on my Flickr stream.

If You're in London on Friday 1st August...

If you're in London tomorrow, and have some free time in the morning, this might interest you:

The society have got permission to take a few telescopes along to Hyde Park in London, near Speakers' Corner, to view the partial eclipse on Friday morning, which is between 9.32 and 11.03 am BST, with mid eclipse at 10.16. The Sun will be about 20% covered (see separate thread for what this means).

Any members who care to join us will be very welcome, though we only have permission for a few small telescopes so we don't need any more. It is possible that the media will be there as well as we are sending out a press release.

Quiet Sun Again?

This evening I've been catching up with my observing logs. Recently all I've been managing to do in terms of observing is sunspot counts and I've got a nasty habit when I do them. Given that I do the counts during the day (dur!) I tend to pop into the garden with the solarscope, do a quick count (or not so quick if things look interesting — I'll even photograph the sunspots if I think it'll be interesting enough), and then pop back into the office and write the key details on a scrap of paper and place it under my monitor.

The problem with this is I tend to let them pile up. Eventually I crack and write them up in my observing logbook and then type up the XML log file that gets turned into the online log.

This really is one nasty habit I should break.

The thing that I did notice when sorting out these latest logs this evening is that I've not seen a sunspot since 2008-03-31 (the last one seen and recorded being part of active area 988). While this isn't quite so long a time as late last year it does seem rather quiet again, at least in terms of the days I've been able to observe and what I can see with my modest equipment.

It's all making my sunspot graphs look rather bare.

Two Years of Sunspot Counts

A little earlier I was typing up some recent solar observation reports and I realised that it's now over two years since I started observing the sun as often as possible and keeping a log of sunspot counts.

The weather seems to have been against me lately. Over the past few months I've not managed to log many observations (see March this year for example: only 6 counts recorded) and that's kind of frustrating.

Still, the graphs of solar activity seem to be coming along nicely. Even though there's a fair bit of data missing due to days when I couldn't observe there does seem to be a general hint of the recent solar minimum.

Another Lubitel Star Trail

Further to my last attempt at some star trails with my Lomo Lubitel 166B I've now received a scan of the developed film of one I did I did during a session on 2008-02-09.

This time I was using Ilford HP5+ 400. Conditions were less than ideal, the sky was rather hazy for the whole observing session and everything got rather damp pretty quickly (hence the reason there's only one trail for the whole session). However, despite all of this, it's turned out better than I thought it would.

Thanks once again go to Tim Haynes for processing and scanning the film.

Next week's lunar eclipse

I'm not sure if I'll get to observe next week's total lunar eclipse (assuming the weather will be fine) due to the fact that a) it's during the working week and b) all the fun stuff happens at silly hours. Which is sort of annoying given just how enjoyable the last one was (even if I did manage to destroy a pair of glasses).

However, if anyone is thinking of staying up for it, you might find this article by the Society for Popular Astronomy useful as it as all the information you'll need. This includes details of the planned LunarObservers.com live webcast.

Lubitel Star Trails

Last week I managed to finish off the film in my Lomo Lubitel 166B which contained some star trails I did during an observing session on 2008-01-05. After some developing and scanning by a friend (thanks Tim!) I finally got to see the results.

And they're not too bad either:

Obviously those thumbnails don't do them justice so click on the images or visit the whole set to see the large versions.

Comet Holmes Still Naked Eye Object?

Last Saturday I managed to get out for my first "proper" observing session in a while. I had a pretty good night and managed to get views of Mars, M42, Saturn and M81 and M81.

But that wasn't the best part. The best part was the bit when I spotted something odd near Algol:

While stood looking at the Double Cluster with the naked eye I spotted something close by, near Algol, that appeared to be about the same size and of a similar brightness to it. Initially I was confused about what it was. I quickly grabbed my monocular and had a look and could see that it was a faint but noticeable misty patch. Given that I wasn't aware of any object in that location, and given that I couldn't find any such thing on my charts (not that I expected to — I'd have known about such an object if it were a "fixed" item in the sky), I suspected that it was comet Holmes.

Further visual checks at the time and checks with online charts for Holmes suggest that I really was seeing the comet.

This genuinely surprised me. It's been a while since I last observed it and I'd assumed that it wouldn't be visible to the naked eye any more, that it might even have faded beyond a point where I'd be able to observe it with any of my equipment.

Anyone else out there still seeing it this way?

Also, totally aside from the above, I also decided to try something a little different (for me) in terms of astrophotography (not that I do much astrophotography). I took along my Lomo Lubitel 166B, loaded with Ilford FP+ 125, and during the observing session had it pointing at various parts of the sky for around ½ hour at a time. I've no idea what, if anything, I'm going to get out of it, but I needed to use up some frames on the film and the chance to do some astrophotography with a TLR, on black and white medium-format form, was too good to pass up.

Heck, if it turns out reasonably well I might give it a go with colour next time. Might even mount the 166B on the back of the 130M and use its drive to go for some non-trailed shots.

Finally! Some Solar Action!

As I noted last month the Sun has been very quiet of late (as it turned out I didn't observe a single spot during the whole of November) and I've got used to popping outside with the Solarscope and seeing a totally blank Sun.

So I had a bit of a surprise today when I went out, fully expecting to see nothing, and saw active area 978. It's quite an impressive set of sunspots too. While no individual spot is that large the area itself is one of the bigger ones I've seen for a while.

If you've got a safe method of observing the Sun then get out and have a look. If you don't have a method of doing so, head over here instead.

Quiet Sun

I've just been catching up on my observing logs and I've just noticed how long it is since I last saw a sunspot.

So far this month I've not seen a single thing on the Sun. Neither did I see anything during the whole of October. Almost all of September was quiet too with the last time I saw a sunspot being September 1^st.

You can see from my graphs that this is quite a prolonged quiet spell.

From what I've read solar minimum now seems to be predicted for March next year. Now, okay, I know these things can be ±6 months or so, but it has got me wondering if I'm in for a very quiet winter when it comes to solar observing.

In other news: I managed to get another look at comet Holmes last night.

You could fill a book... Part III

My short session observing comet Holmes a couple of evenings ago was also another little milestone for me. I finally filled my third log book.

This third book has taken quite a long time to fill. I filled the second one just over a year ago and it took less than a year from me filling the first one.

The main reason for this is that observing has been quite slow this year. While I've done a fair bit of solar observing, evening/night observing sessions have been few and far between. When I got out to observe comet Holmes back on Monday that was the first non-solar session since May!

The reasons are many and varied, but most revolve around weather, some illness and, now and again, a lack of motivation. Something "special" in the sky is always a good motivator and the summer months were totally devoid of anything to observe that was "special" (yes, Jupiter was about, but was so low that you generally couldn't see it from my garden).

Thankfully Holmes has given me that taste again, got me back into that habit.

It was good to have a 'scope out again last night and I think I've finally got that bug back again.

More Comet Holmes

Last night I finally had the chance to get the Antares 905 out and have a quick session observing Comet Holmes.

Much as I expected it was more impressive in the 'scope than it was in the binocular. It was interesting to see how different it looked at different magnifications and how subtle details in the structure of the coma seemed more obvious at one magnification than at another.

The view I had was generally very reminiscent of Tim's photographs of it from a couple or so days back (which remind me a lot of the binocular view I've had), or Joe's amazing sketch of it. However, unlike Joe's sketch, I couldn't see any hint of a tail whatsoever. I do notice that there was a significant different in brightness of the outer ring of the coma on one side when compared to the other and that does seem to correspond with where Joe has drawn the tail he was seeing.

I've not written up my notes yet, I should be doing that in the next day or so.

If you own a binocular, or even a modest telescope, and you've not had them out to look at the comet yet, do so while you've still got the chance. It's a very easy object to find and it's a very rewarding view.

Finally! A View of Comet Holmes!

Typical, isn't it? For the few days since news of comet Holmes started doing the rounds it's been cloudy here. Last night I needed to be out for part of the evening, not getting back home until at least 20:30.

Guess what.

Yes, that's right, it's was nice and clear.

However, even while I was out busy doing the thing I needed to be doing I could see that something was wrong in Perseus. I could see there was a star there that shouldn't be there and, unless my eyes were playing tricks on me, it was just a little "fuzzy" when compared to other stars.

When I finally got home it was still clear, just. A huge bank of cloud was rolling in from the west so I had about 15 minutes at the most to get a reasonable view of the comet. I grabbed the Meade 10x50s and headed out into the garden.

Wow!

Yes, I know, "wow" is one of those words that get easily used when something novel turns up in the sky. But, really, wow! It's quite a sight in the bins. Mostly it reminded me of a very bright planetary nebula, the view reminded me somewhat of when I've observed M57 (although, obviously, it was bigger, more circular, brighter and less ring-like — but you get the idea, right?).

Tonight is looking like it could be another clear night.

Guess what...

Lunar Occultation of Saturn

Tonight I was lucky enough to observe the lunar occultation of Saturn.

Skies were nice and clear for me when I got the Explorer 130M out at around 18:45 UT. By 18:51 UT (yes, no time to let the 'scope cool down) I had Saturn in the eyepiece. This in itself was a first for me. The Sun was still above the horizon — that's the first time I've observed that planet during the day.

The view kept switching from being very hard to make out to being very clear, sometimes clear enough that I could just about make out the planet's shadow on the rings.

The dark limb of the Moon wasn't visible at all so I had no visual clues as to how long I had to wait. There were a couple of false starts where I thought I could see part of Saturn was missing. And then, suddenly, it was really obvious that the Moon was cutting into the rings.

Sadly I didn't have a stopwatch with me so I had no way of timing how long the event took. It felt like it was over in about 30 seconds. I know I was very surprised at how quickly it all happened. It was all over by 19:06 UT.

And then I had a break. I had about an hour to wait until Saturn emerged.

Fast forward to 20:00 UT and the Moon was lost behind a load of cloud. I could see, towards the western horizon, a gap, but I didn't hold out much hope for it getting into place in time. For a while all I had to look at was:

Click for larger picture
Finally, at around 20:12 UT a gap in the clouds gave me a view of the Moon but, just as quickly, it went again. By 20:13 UT a bigger gap moved into place and, through the 130M, I could already see Saturn. Part of the rings was still behind the Moon and over the next couple or so minutes I watched it fully emerge (Saturn was free of the Moon by 20:14 UT).

I just watched the gap between them widen for the next couple of minutes and, then, in a moment of madness (not the first moment of madness like this), I grabbed my mobile phone and held the camera in it up to the lens of the 'scope. This is what I got:


Click for larger picture
Probably the worst occultation picture you'll see over the next few days. Probably the worst occultation picture you've ever seen and will ever see. But, what the hell, it had to be done. :-)

By 20:19 UT it had clouded over again. I left it a short while longer and then, realising that was it, I packed up.

I'm so glad I didn't miss it.